


Absent Sun

by Luxio_Nyx



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, So much angst, at some point, basically everyone - Freeform, maybe other relationships, that zombie au that no one wanted, we'll see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2482259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luxio_Nyx/pseuds/Luxio_Nyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here." -Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So, a) this is my first Les Mis fic so please don't hurt me or kill me and let me know if I've gotten anything wrong or if anyone is REALLY OOC here and b) I am a college student using this to keep my sanity in the midst of midterms, so forgive me for possible slow updates.  
> Annnddd that's all, methinks. Lemme know what you all think, kay?

Grantaire dreams about the rally sometimes, when exhaustion and the fear of fates worse than death aren’t enough to drown him in the darkness of imageless sleep where he’s curled around whatever spare bit of space that Eponine and Valjean can find for the night.

  
The dream always begins with a flash of innocence, a sense of safety that never fails to lull him into a false feeling of comfort and ignorance as he watches Enjolras glow atop his latest pedestal, the prepared podium heedlessly abandoned as the golden-haired revolutionary chooses to step closer to the people, his bright blue eyes flashing and warm in a way that the sun never quite managed. Grantaire hardly notices the words painted onto fliers and posters that he and Feuilly had designed- messages of calm and acceptance, of protestations that people are still people even when their hearts have ceased their beating. He forgets that this rally, out of all the others that he lingered at for his Apollo’s sake, had left him with a cold, tight knot of discomfort in the pit of his stomach that even Enjolras’s fire could not melt away.

  
He had seen signs of what the creatures had become where Enjolras had only seen further instances of repression, had seen the blank hunger in the quick bites of video captured by doomed film crews where his leader had seen the dust and grime of neglect, of misunderstanding.

  
By all rights, Grantaire should have been more prepared than he was when everything went to hell: he should have had a plan, _something_ -.

  
“’Taire.”

  
Grantaire jolts awake with a quiet cry that he never quite manages to silence, tired blue eyes locking onto darker, harder orbs before they pull away again.

  
“Wha’ time ‘s it?” he mumbles, ignoring the scratch of his voice against a raw throat, further evidence of the dreams that still linger in his mind like stubborn shadows in the face of the dawn.

  
Eponine shrugs and bends to press a gentle hand against the smaller form tucked against the floor somewhere to Grantaire’s left. Cosette pulls herself away from the floor with more grace than Grantaire could ever manage, her dark golden ringlets tumbling in tangled waves across her shoulders in a rare moment of freedom before she tucks them away for the day, just as Eponine has already hidden her own dark locks beneath a weathered cap. The younger girl looks automatically for her father, as she always does, her slim shoulders relaxing automatically when she sees Valjean’s hulking form bent close to Bahorel’s chestnut head in quiet discussion. Grantaire feels an immediate flare of guilt at the sight of them, wondering how it was that they had failed to wake him for his turn at watch.

  
“Don’t,” Eponine warns him gruffly. “…They let me sleep, too.”

  
Grantaire groaned and ran a hand through his matted curls with a faint grimace.

  
“They need to stop doing that,” he mumbled, earning himself a grunt of agreement and the closest thing to a smile that the slim girl had managed since her brother had disappeared amidst the twisting, screaming mass of bodies that had plunged Enjolras’s final rally into-.

  
Grantaire shakes himself from the thought before it can go any further and pulls himself to his feet with a steadiness that he can’t quite bring himself to be proud of. It’s been weeks since he’s touched the bottle, and somewhere in the back of his mind he cannot stop himself from picturing the way Joly and Bossuet would have lit up at the news, how Courfeyrac would have teased him with something verging on awe, how Feuilly and Jehan would have hugged him because they were always too damn into that kind of thing, and Combeferre would have smiled that calm, peaceful smile and Enjolras…

  
What would he have done, his Apollo?

  
He starts when a cool hand presses against his arm and manages a muted smile for Cosette when she wordlessly presses a bit of bread into his grasp- the result of a recent stay at a bakery that was already on its way to ruin. Both Grantaire and Bahorel had hated it there, unable to push thoughts of multiple gatherings cobbled together by Courfeyrac and the others for the most pointless celebrations that everyone had treasured nonetheless.

  
It is the last bit of bread that Grantaire can be sure of getting with the state of the world as it is and he smiles at this golden girl that none but Marius had truly cared to know before everything happened.

  
It was Cosette who had pulled him away from the knot of writhing, decaying bodies that had blocked his view of Enjolras, who had found Eponine unconscious in the crowd and had convinced Grantaire to help her carry the other girl away from the crowds to some semblance of safety.

  
“Thank you,” he murmurs while she is busy pressing another piece of bread into Eponine’s steady hands.

  
Cosette rewards him with a sweet smile and pads over to Bahorel and Valjean with a murmured greeting, her smile widening and brightening when Valjean takes one look at the bread and gives a gruff chuckle that brightens his weathered features with a flash of humour. Grantaire watches the two in silence, knowing without looking that Eponine is doing the same. The tall man with salt-and-pepper hair had not hesitated to take them in when Cosette had brought them to his doorstep, had only paused to give them clothes and food and weapons of their own before packing them all into the car that hadn’t stopped on its trip out of the city except to pick up a bloodied, frantic Bahorel that Grantaire had spotted with a low cry of relief and horror. Neither Grantaire nor Eponine can bring themselves to be as open or easy with Valjean and Cosette as they had once been to their friends, though Bahorel had formed an odd sort of friendship with the man, and Grantaire suspects that a few more acts of kindness would leave him nearly as protective of the pair as he was of Eponine and Bahorel. Based on Eponine’s recent, quiet determination to keep father and daughter from harm, he suspects he isn't entirely alone in the sentiment.

  
His smile is a touch less strained when Bahorel saunters up to fall to the ground beside him and Eponine, his eyes shadowed and tired but still bright with some hint of the confident humour that he had once possessed.

  
“We’re going to miss this bread, you know,” he muses. “When we’re stuck with nothin’ but granola and shit for weeks on end.”

  
Grantaire groans and makes a show of taking smaller bites of the hunk in his hand, wishing for the thousandth time for a good cut of meat.

  
No one had really been able to bring themselves to hunt, not when no conclusions had been reached regarding whether or not the virus could be passed to animals as well as humans.

  
“Any idea where we’re going today?” he asked when Bahorel made no further comment and Eponine seemed content to stare out of the remains of what had once been a kitchen window.

  
Bahorel shrugged. “Away? I don’t know- I doubt he really does, either. All we know is that it’s safer to get away from the cities- there’ll be more of those… _things_ there.”

  
“Might as well call them what they are,” Eponine murmurs. “I doubt zombies care much for courtesy.”

  
Bahorel grimaces. “You know that’s not why I can’t say the word.”

  
Eponine is silent again, and Grantaire can’t bring himself to speak until Valjean and Cosette have joined them, packs already strapped to their shoulders with twin machetes at their waists- and if Grantaire has elected to never ask how either of them came by a pair of machetes (let alone the sledgehammer that rests quietly next to Valjean’s pack), that is entirely his own business. At any rate, the crossbow that he takes in his hands works well enough and the crowbar that picked up just outside of Paris is a comforting weight at his side. He sees Eponine tuck several knives about her person and nearly smiles at how well they fit her.

  
“Are you ready?” Valjean asks them, not unkindly.

  
Grantaire nods silently and offers the man a smile that isn’t nearly as crooked as the one that had never failed to make Enjolras glare at him.

  
… Someday, he may actually get through a full minute without thinking of the golden Apollo. He’s not looking forward to that day- he feels that it may very well be worse than the moment when he had passed beyond the boundaries of Paris and felt his heart ache with the first shades of hopelessness.

  
Valjean smiles at him in return and reaches out a hesitant hand to clasp his shoulder in a gesture that is almost fatherly. Grantaire holds back a grimace but nods all the same, falling into step behind them all while Bahorel and Eponine silently take up positions at Cosette and Valjean’s flanks. He prefers his position at the rear- it lets him keep an eye on them all, keeps him from slipping into that dark massive fear that they will all disappear when he isn’t looking, that he will lose them, too.  
They have left the last vestiges of the tiny, ruined village that had been their home for the night by the time that the sun has reached its highest point in the sky, their packs and pockets full with whatever food that they had managed to scavenge from abandoned cupboards and ruined grocery stores. Grantaire feels a brief surge of hope when he sees shelves that have been emptied by something other than time, unable to stop himself form wondering if a familiar figure in red had taken from these shelves, was moving ahead of them even now, fairly begging to be overtaken.

  
He isn’t the first to see the shadows creeping towards them from the shelter of the last of the houses, though the crossbow is already raised and aimed before Valjean has fully uttered his quiet warning and Eponine has fallen back close to his side with two knives poised between her fingers.

  
Both of their weapons fall, useless, to the ground when the smaller of the two figures sprints towards them with a familiar shout, dirty blond hair streaming behind him like a banner in the early December sunlight.

  
“EPONINE!” he shrieks.

  
“ _Gav_ ,” she gasps, her arms wrapping around his tiny shoulders immediately after he has thrown himself into her grasp, her dark head bent over his lighter one in a rare contradiction.

  
Grantaire lets out a deep, painful sigh and leans against Bahorel’s offered shoulder for support, his heart soaring and screaming in his chest, lifted by the relief of seeing the smallest member of Les Amis, yet cracking along abused fissures at the thought of another head of gold that isn’t there, that is still missing…

  
The second of the shadows steps forward with more reluctance, his hands curled around the dull surface of a gun that remains pointed at the ground despite the obvious uncertainty in his eyes.

  
“Jean Valjean?” he murmurs.

  
Grantaire straightens even as Valjean stiffens in front of them, his broad shoulders moving ever-so-slightly to put himself between the man and Cosette. Neither Bahorel nor Grantaire miss the way the man’s own shoulders slump at the sight, though his head remains raised, if a touch defiant.

  
“Javert,” Valjean greets stiffly. “You… Are there others with you, then?”

  
Javert, shakes his head in genuine regret and lifts a hand from his rifle to gesture to Gavroche.

  
“I had been dispatched to the, ah, protest before everything happened,” he explains quietly. “My men… most of them were cut down. I found Gavroche when the last of my comrades had been… I couldn’t- We left together,” he finishes lamely, his weathered features flushed beneath the rough, greying stubble that has gathered along the lower half of his face.

  
Eponine raises her head and studies the man for a long, tense moment before she nods.

  
“ _Thank you_ ,” she breathes.

  
Javert nods jerkily and ducks his head, his throat working furiously for a moment before he straightens and tugs at the straps of a worn pack on his shoulders.

  
“I… will be on my way, then,” he grunts. He nods once towards Gavroche, whose features have made a sudden reappearance in time for him to frown up at the man in obvious confusion. “Take care of the boy.”

  
“J…” Gavroche murmurs, his frown deepening when Javert only shakes his head and turns to go.

  
“Javert,” Valjean calls, causing the other man to freeze in his tracks. The two men regard each other for a long moment, apparently oblivious to the curious looks that they are earning from those around them.

  
“You are more than welcome to come with us, you know,” he points out. “… Gavroche would miss you at any rate.”

  
Javert fixes him with an unimpressed look, his hard, ice-blue eyes softening ever-so-slightly when he meets Gavroche’s gaze before he glances back at Valjean. Cosette stepps forward before anything more can be said and offers Javert her hand, her kind features creased in a small smile.

  
“You are welcome,” she insists.

  
Javert quietly shakes his head, moving as if to step back even as Gavroche detaches himself from Eponine’s grip and runs up to smack the man’s arm.

  
“You’re not leaving,” he informs him.

  
Javert lets out a noise too choked to be called a laugh and rolls his eyes to the sky, his grip loosening from its death grip around his gun.

  
“You won’t enjoy my company,” he warns them.

  
“God knows I didn’t,” Gavroche remarks drily, young face creasing into an automatic grin at some remembered joke that the others haven’t been able to share.

  
Javert rolls his eyes again and waits until the others have begun to move again, choosing to fall in beside Grantaire at the rear with a brief, searching glance at the other man. Grantaire gives him a slight nod, barely willing to accept the man who had nearly arrested most of Les Amis at one point or other (himself included). Judging by the tight, almost-amused smile that Javert gives him in return, the policeman hasn’t forgotten him, either.

  
Still, the man had saved Gavroche, and perhaps…

  
“You remember my friends,” he states.

“I was planning to charge the blond one for my future hearing aids,” Javert grunts. “He was very fond of yelling into megaphones.”

  
Grantaire smiles suddenly and finds himself biting back his first laugh since Paris. The smile and the laughter following it fade just as quickly as they appear and he turns to Javert once again, hands clenching around the crossbow in his arms.

  
“Did you see them when you left?” he asks quietly. “The blond- Enjolras. Did you see him?”

  
Javert looks at him for a long moment before shaking his head, features dark with genuine regret.

  
“No,” he replies finally. “I’m sorry. I lost track of them when my men were attacked.”

  
Grantaire gives him a nod and ducks his head so the other man can’t see the frustration and tears gathering in his eyes. _Dammit_ …

  
“Paris is a big city, though,” Javert reminds him tersely. “I- just because I didn’t see him… It’s possible.”

  
Grantaire nods again and allows them to fall into silence, broken only by the sounds of their feet against legions of decaying leaves that line the road ahead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so, I'm sorry that this is so short, and, again, I promise that I will update this as often as I can.  
> Also, thank you so much to everyone that has read/reviewed this. You guys never fail to make my week and it's awesome :3  
> Please let me know if I got anyone's characters wrong!

Enjolras doesn’t sleep.

  
According to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, he hadn’t slept much to begin with but it had gotten to the point where even Marius had started to give him concerned looks close to a week after they had finally dragged themselves away from Paris, too tired from the constant fear of the undead and the tangible, tense silence that fell with every mop of half-familiar hair atop decaying features. It had taken an exhausted, newly-arrived Feuilly half way to hysterics to convince Enjolras to agree to the group’s plan to head closer to the French coast in a desperate bid to find a possible safe haven.

  
“You didn’t sleep again, did you?”

  
Enjolras shrugs and keeps his eyes focused in front of him while Combferre settles onto the ground beside him with a small huff. He takes a moment to listen to the quiet, measured breathing of Courfeyrac, Feuilly and Marius somewhere behind them and the sounds of Jehan slowly bringing a small fire to life less than a foot away, stealing some small form of comfort from the knowledge that he isn’t entirely alone.

  
He doesn’t focus on the constant, aching pain somewhere within his chest at the noticeable absence of a humming snore and the once-familiar scent of wine in the air. Combeferre sighs and gently brushes their shoulders together, making the blond wonder how much the other man truly sees.

  
“No,” he answers finally. “…Someone had to keep watch.”

  
“Which Marius, Courf and I did, if I’m remembering correctly,” Combeferre informs him gently.

  
Enjolras frowns and finally turns to look at the taller man, jaw tightening at the visible smudges and cracks in his best friend’s glasses.

  
“You didn’t have to,” he murmurs. “I couldn’t sleep, anyways.”

  
“I’ve noticed,” Combeferre remarks drily. His expression softens and darkens with concern as he studies Enjolras’s features with his own slight frown. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, Enj, but-.”

  
“Don’t,” Enjolras whispers, knowing even as he says it that he’s fighting a losing battle.

  
Combeferre fixes him with a quick, scathing look and pushes forward. “It wasn’t your fault. The rally- none of that was your fault.”

  
“I made him come,” Enjolras sighs, and he knows, he _knows_ that this is giving too much away, that he’s being a burden when his friends hardly have any room on their shoulders for anything else. “All of you, all of them- I made you all come to that, I put you all in danger.”

  
“You didn’t make us do anything,” Combeferre tells him quietly. “Joly and Bossuet weren’t even there, remember? They stayed home to take care of Chetta- you didn’t make them feel guilty for it; hell, you fairly threw Bossuet back into his car when he tried to help us anyways. The rest of us came to the rally, helped plan the rally because we agreed with the idea, we _wanted_ to help, Enjolras.” He pauses for a long moment and absently runs a hand through Enjolras’s tangled blond curls before adding in a quieter voice: “You didn’t make Grantaire do anything.”

  
“He wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for me,” Enjolras mumbles, and isn’t it utterly fantastic that he’s come to understand this now, when he can’t do anything about it and he can’t search those bright blue eyes for the spark that he hadn’t learned to look for until Grantaire had disappeared behind a mass of decaying bodies and sent Enjolras’s heart spiralling into an endless freefall.

  
“It was still his choice,” Combeferre whispers. “You never forced him to follow you, Enj.”

  
“Ferre? Enj?” Jehan calls quietly, his voice catching when Feuilly mumbles something unintelligible and rolls over to clutch at the edge of Marius’s frayed sleeve. The trio pauses to watch their sleeping companions before Jehan carefully inches closer, his hands cupped around a bowl- and where he had gotten a bowl, Enjolras would never really know- of something that almost resembled oatmeal. The blond’s hair is only slightly more tamed than Enjolras’s longer locks are at this point, the mangled petals of a tiny pink flower still cradled behind his ear where Courfeyrac had tucked it in an effort to make Feuilly and Combeferre smile.

  
“It’s not much,” Jehan murmurs, mouth twisted into an apologetic smile. “I packed some dried oatmeal when we stopped by the Musain after…”

  
He stops and swallows against the memories that are crowding against the back of Enjolras’s eyes- Courfeyrac’s bloodied features pale and slack as Combeferre held him tightly against his chest, eyes darker and more frightened than Enjolras had ever seen them while Jehan fairly dragged a half-conscious Marius behind them, their eyes fixed intently on the Musain ahead of them, silently praying to any god that still existed that the others had made it back, that they would be waiting for them, that they would be _alive_.

  
“…didn’t sleep again,” Combeferre’s voice breaks in to Enjolras’s thoughts, dragging his attention to the stricken look on Jehan’s face and the way his thin fingers tremble beneath his over-long sleeves around the sides of the bowl.

  
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, fingers curling into tight fists in his lap when Jehan only cringes slightly and presses the bowl into his hands.

  
“You’ll have to share, I’m afraid,” Jehan informs them quietly. “I, ah, only packed so many…”

  
“It’s perfect,” Enjolras tells him firmly, forcing his lips to quirk into a smile that even he knows is only a ghost of what it used to be.

  
Jehan’s answering smile isn’t much better, though there is a familiar gleam in his eyes when Combeferre and Enjolras tuck into the mash and offer suitable groans of appreciation.

  
“Food?” Courfeyrac mumbles somewhere behind them, followed almost immediately by some grumbled words in Polish from Feuilly’s general direction.

  
Combeferre truly smiles at that and scoops another mouthful of mash into his mouth even as Jehan retreats to the fire to throw another bowl of his concoction together. An answering chorus of relieved and thankful cries greets the Frenchman’s efforts, though Enjolras remains quiet, thinking about the last time his friends had all eaten together just before the rally…

  
“Enj, I swear to God, if you don’t stop thinking so loudly I will come over there and hug you to death!” Courfeyrac yells, voice trailing off into a curse muffled by Marius’s tired voice rising in a weary grumble folded around the remains of Cosette’s name.

  
Enjolras forces a smile past the automatic guilt associated with yet another name that they can’t account for, thoughts flickering back to the faces that they are still missing, the friends that are missing because he-.

  
Courfeyrac’s arms wrap around him and fairly pull the blond off of his perch and into the shorter man’s broad chest.

  
“You didn’t sleep again,” Courfeyrac mumbles into the back of Enjolras’s head, his muscles relaxing noticeably when Combeferre’s gentle warmth joined theirs, the warm surface of Jehan’s bowl pressed between them.

  
“No.”

  
Enjolras feels Courfeyrac sigh and manages to smile when the shorter man only burrows closer, dark curls mixing with gold and brown in the morning light. He allows himself to relax into the familiar warmth for a brief moment, thoughts blessedly silent before he pulls away and remembers another man with wilder black curls and warm blue eyes that stare back at him every time he closes his eyes, keeping him from unconsciousness solely from the fear of what he will find there.

  
He’s moving with the rest of them when the last of the food has been eaten and Jehan’s fire has been put out, following Courfeyrac and Combeferre as they had always followed him, unable to stop his eyes from roaming over the trees as they always do, both dreading and hoping for a glimpse of a familiar face untouched by decay.

  
He thinks of Grantaire, thinks of the corpse that he had seen once in the streets of Paris when he had slipped away from Courfeyrac and Combeferre in search of food. He remembers staring down at the body’s dark, matted curls, his hands knotted in the folds of his coat to keep himself from shaking cold, limp shoulders, waiting for blue eyes to flutter open and smile at him.

  
He had run before he could convince himself to that the curls were too familiar, had stumbled empty-handed and silent through the barricades Jehan and Marius had built around the Musain, refusing to look to the corner of the bar where blue eyes had once smirked at him behind the rim of the bottle and revolution had meant more than a world turned upside down by death.

  
Enjolras shudders and tightens his grip around the straps of his pack, forcing his eyes to focus on the path in front of them rather than the trees that mock him with their shadows and dying hopes.


End file.
